


Something's Lost and Something's Gained

by executrix



Category: Continuum (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 08:55:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5450774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A treat for Fabrisse, who asked for Kiera Cameron/Alec Sadler, together and content. I wanted to treat this when I saw the end of the series, and started to ship them for post-series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something's Lost and Something's Gained

_Now old friends are acting strange,  
They shake their heads, they say I’ve changed.  
Well, something’s lost and something’s gained  
In living, every day.  
I’ve looked at life from both sides, now_ (Joni Mitchell, “Both Sides Now”)

“You knew Commander Fonnegra!” said Kiera (the other Kiera, City Protective Services Protector Sergeant Kiera Cameron, but she wasn’t Green Kiera).

Alec shot a satirical look over to Kiera—the first Kiera. Red Kiera. _After we come here and feed her what must sound like a huge vat of fantastical crap, that’s what she wants to know?_

The prototype, the OK, felt like a compass. Not the one for finding directions, but the one for scribing circles. The other Kiera, in the center, with Sam, had been there all the time. The first Kiera had swung around her, in a wide circle, always focused on Sam. And now she had swung back to the starting point. 

“Yes,” Kiera said. “I knew him very well. Not—intimately. But very well. We were partners. What can I say? He was a good cop. He was a good man.”

Alec wasn’t entirely a member of the Carlos Fonnegra Fan Club, but he didn’t say anything, not wanting to spoil things for Kiera. 

“And—you! You’re a billionaire! You inherited everything from your…your…”

Alec nodded. And about that subject, the less said, the better. When he got back to 2077, one of his first acts was to visit his fantastically wrinkled and guilt-burdened self. And, with apologies on his lips and tears in his eyes, to press a pillow into that face. But not before Old Alec gave him absolution. “Go ahead, son. It’s why I sent Garza back, after all.” Kiera watched; it was far from the worst thing she’d seen recently. Her help was not needed.

Alec’s next act, after drafting the legal documents that left much of his money to himself (and much to charity), was to occupy his new-old office at SadTech, and destroy every scrap of information about the scaffolding of tyranny whose creation he regretted so much. It hadn’t happened, this time around, and he made sure that it never would. 

“The reason we came here,” Kiera started to say, haltingly, “Is…I would never do anything to harm your relationship with Sam. You’re his Mom. I know that. But…I miss him so much. I would like to be in his life, just a little bit. You know what a wonderful kid he is. He’s so sweet, and so smart! But at that age, kids aren’t very curious about grown-ups, we just don’t matter that much. So if you could introduce me as, some sort of cousin of yours. From out of town. Just moved here. Which is almost true.”

“What do you do?” the other Kiera said. She suspected, from the proprietary way in which Alec stretched his arm to fit around Kiera’s shoulder, that her counterpart had few money worries, but it would be insulting to presume.

(Right after they arrived, Alec had five homes and Kiera had none, other than one where she didn’t want to appear paradoxically. She had no documents or official existence; he could fabricate dossiers that could pass off anyone as anyone. He was willing to give her the keys of one of the spare mansions, but neither of them really wanted to be alone. The first night, they fell asleep on separate islands of the white leather sectional sofa in the penthouse perched on SadTech Tower, surveilling the city. 

“I need a bodyguard,” he said. “God knows I know you’re badass. And I know I’m not.” He gave her the codes to a few of his accounts. “Pay yourself whatever you want.” 

They were so lonely, their heads full and echoing with versions—sometimes multiple versions—of people who weren’t there—and only one person who understood at all. So they slept in the huge bed in the master suite. The fourth night, they woke up in the center of the bed, embracing. They laughed uneasily and rolled to opposite sides. The sixth night, Alec kissed Kiera and she pushed him away and made a disgusted face and huffed off to a guest room. She slept there for a couple of weeks, when Alec came in and sat on the bed and asked for another chance. She said he was way, way too young for her and now that she was back here she was married. She respected that he didn’t say that that hadn’t stopped her before. Maybe what was in 2012 stayed in 2012. And they almost had a fight, and Kiera sighed about how hard it would be to find an apartment and start all over again. Alec said that Kellog proved that she didn’t have a problem with short guys. She said she didn’t have a problem with short guys, she had a problem with dickheads, and Kellog proved that sometimes she had no taste. Then she felt sorry for him, and stretched out her arms. Now, she was gratified by young-guy stamina and young-guy insatiability, but sometimes wished that when he had anxieties to soothe, he would just take a sleeping pill and let her study.)

“I’m a law student,” the first Kiera said. “I’m planning to specialize in international human rights law.”

“You do look a little bit like me. We could be from the same family, sure.”

(Shortly after their arrival, Kiera and Alec hatched the plan. “Like Mrs. Doubtfire,” he said. Kiera wrinkled her forehead, wondering what he meant. She missed her CMR screen, and flicked her eyes to where it would have been a thousand times a day, for footnotes to Alec’s references. She could pull her HandComm out of her pocket and look up the information, but but it wasn’t the same. She missed her suit, missed its complement of weapons. They didn’t exist here: the police were thrown back on their own resources. 

In one of the gilded, marble bathrooms of one of his penthouses, Alec trimmed her hair to a chin-length bob, and dyed it honey-blonde with a conspicuous pink streak on one side. (Later, Kiera found that Alec had kept the plait of her shorn hair, wrapped in tissue paper in a drawer; she was touched by his sentimentality, but thought it was sort of creepy.) She mail-ordered green contact lenses. Alec came up with a legend that got Kendra Cameron admitted to law school, and ensured that she would have her pick of jobs when she graduated. Kiera thought that he was generous, to help her get Sam back, however partially, when she didn’t think he was ever getting Little Miss Kitty-Kiddy Assassin back. She thought it was good riddance but she knew he didn’t.)

“What about Greg?” the second Kiera asked, twisting the wedding ring on her finger. Alec smirked at the tell. 

“You can keep him!” Kiera said. “Uh, I mean, I don’t want to interfere in your life at all. And I’d prefer not to meet Greg. There would have to be too many explanations.” 

“I don’t know why, but I trust you,” the other Kiera told her. “And, of course, you have a celebrity to vouch for you.”

“We’re street-wise,” Kiera said. “We’ve got good instincts. Cop instincts. You should trust them.” 

FOUR MONTHS LATER

“Got to go, Sam,” Kiera said. She got tired of the bob and switched to a strawberry blonde pixie cut. The first time he saw the new coiffure, Alec suppressed his shiver and didn’t mention Garza.

Kiera put her tea mug and Sam’s cookie plate in her counterpart’s kitchen sink. Sam hadn’t been any help at all with her Criminal Law problem set (a subject which seemed to have sprouted all sorts of complications in comparison to her days of shooting first and asking questions with rabbit punches). She suspected she hadn’t been much more help with his math homework. He got up to hug her. “Bye, Aunt Kendra!” he said. The other Kiera often called her to baby-sit, when she had to work overtime on a hot case or for a staff meeting. 

The law school campus was near Fonnegra Plaza. The four-story library sat between two six-story classroom and admin buildings. In the atrium of the Dillon Building, near the waterfall, a couple of students wearing t-shirts printed with a labyrinth hawked pamphlets, held clipboards with petitions for signature, and advertised the next Liber8 meeting. 

Kiera bought a copy of The Theseus Manifesto, and dropped it into her book bag. She bought a reusable flacon of mamey-flavored kefir from one of the food trucks. She couldn’t get rid of the habit of punctuality, so she got to the lecture ten minutes early. She sat down toward the side aisle of the lecture hall—not down front, not the skydeck—and, after a quick check of her notes for the previous lecture, she gave a long look at the front-cover photograph of Julian Randol, then started to read.

“What, that old thing?” said one of her fellow students, 

“He’s got some interesting things to say,” Kiera said, putting a bookmarker into the book and putting it back in her tote bag. 

“It’s naïve,” said Robert, whose trademark was wearing three-piece tailored suits and starched shirts with contrasting white collars to classes otherwise clothed in jeans and SadCot shirts (and their equally sustainable SadWool counterparts in the winter, under SadDown thermvests). Kiera was glad that Robert never got to, or never had to, meet Kellog, but thought that they would have been able to bond along an Axis of Haberdashery. “As naïve as Marx predicting a revolution in industrialized Germany. Corporations create value and promote innovation. And that stuff about corporate tyranny? Pure science fiction. Look, human nature doesn’t change, and what motivates people is individual self-interest.”

At the Locavore Market, Kiera’s favorite hydroponic vegetable vendor also had a tray of homemade candies. She immediately snapped up two chocolate oranges—one for Sam, one for Alec. She pondered buying two more for herself (one for the mantelpiece, one to eat). But she patted side (a moment on the lips, several timelines on the hips!), and merely snapped a picture as a background for her classroom NoteTablet.


End file.
